


it's all a mess but at least it's the two of us here

by Anonymous



Series: des_is_writing [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternative Universe - FBI, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Supernatural Elements, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:00:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27245386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Special Agent Peter Parker was assigned to work on a new assignment -- instructions from F.B.I. Director Fury himself. But how will he handle straddling the line between colleagues and maybe something more with Special Agent Anthony -- call me Tony -- Stark and his project, the X-Files, while actually doing his damn job. Aliens? Cryptids? Gore? Peter's main concern is keeping the sexual tension low and his reports flawless. Thank you very much.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Series: des_is_writing [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695733
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10
Collections: Anonymous





	it's all a mess but at least it's the two of us here

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween!

Peter sees the open doorway before he hears voices inside – one of which is recognizably F.B.I. Director Fury – but the rest of the voices are a jumble of vowels and syllables that Peter can barely hope to identify in the mere moments he has to present himself before the Director. But Peter knows this is far likely to have much more significance than he was initially led to believe. 

He’s mostly certain he won’t be fired, as a simple form would have been sufficient, but this type of meeting seems too formal, too much for such an objective?

Peter takes a deep breath before entering the office doorway and knocks to announce his arrival. He’s surprised to see Deputy Director Natasha Romanoff, Associate Deputy Director Maria Hill, and Chief of Staff Phil Coulson. The voices come to a stop at his arrival. Peter hasn’t been to this office before, so he’s immediate takes in the layout, which he might even call it excessive. Director Fury sits behind his polished wood desk, while Deputy Director Romanoff stands off to the side facing the window with a tablet in her arms. Hill and Coulson are seated at the dark leather armchairs at the back of the office.

“Special Agent Parker,” Director Fury greets, motioning Peter to take an empty seat right in front of his desk. Peter is quick to comply, sitting down with his briefcase set flat against his lap. Peter’s mind turns to static, anxious as the proper decorum here, but he manages a “Good Afternoon, Director Fury,” and turns slightly to the rest of the room’s occupants, and with a nod to each, “Deputy Director Romanoff, Associate Deputy Director Hill, Chief of Staff Coulson.”

Coulson lets out a small laugh, to which Romanoff answers, “no need to be so formal, Parker.” Peter can feel his cheeks burn, but he’d rather be overly formal than irresponsibly casual. Michelle would say it’s part of his trademark Parker charm, so he’s crossing his fingers that this works to his favor right now. Hill quickly crosses the room to close the door, which only heightens Peter’s anxiety.

“You know, Parker, I worked with your parents before you were born,” Fury starts. Peter immediately tries to figure out where this conversation is leading. Promotion? But Peter wasn’t particularly high ranking as of this morning, so a promotion at this point shouldn’t require such appearances by high ranking officers. “Special Agent Mary Fitzgerald and Special Agent Richard Parker were some of the best agents I’ve ever seen. In fact, I believe I went to your baby shower.” Director Fury seems to take immense pleasure in Peter’s growing discomfort.

“Glad to continue the legacy, sir,” Peter hazards, ignoring the smirk from Romanoff in the corner of his eye. He hopes it’s a charmed smirk. That they’re not all secretly laughing at him. They might. Michelle once characterized the handful of them as sharks who can smell a single drop of blood miles away.

“Great agents, the pair of them,” Fury says, making brief eye contact with Romanoff, who seems to take this as her cue. She sits on the corner of the desk and fully faces Peter.

“Their sacrifice to the country saved thousands of lives,” she says. “You must be proud.”

Peter swallows – hopefully inaudibly – and manages a nod. “Of course.” Romanoff continues to stare him down, but with a warm smile that just only manages to unnerve Peter. He gets the feeling they’re subtly analyzing him for loyalty to the Bureau. So, definitely a promotion? A new project? He keeps his face neutral, however.

“And what do you know of their projects?”

Peter straightens in his seat. “Well, they both worked in counter-terrorism, but my mother worked in FBI Laboratory and my father worked in the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate in their Intelligence and Analysis Section. I’m unsure of what projects they worked on, except for their last one.”

Fury leans back in his seat and rests a hand tentatively at his chin. “You’ve been with us for a couple of years. Tell us about your path in the Bureau, Parker.”

“Right, of course,” Peter replies. “After I graduated from Princeton with a Ph.D. in Psychology, I was scouted from the Bureau. There, I worked as a Field Agent, where I was then promoted to Special Agent.”

Romanoff swipes a bit on her tablet. “How do you negotiate between your two focuses of chemistry and psychology? I mean, you’re a published author in both fields. The former, you hypothesized a new way of identifying blood and DNA through a,” she squints at the display, “human serum albumin and tetraphenylethene maleimide dye.”

“Oh, well, that was based on the mild catalyst-free thio-lene click reaction between the two, and HAS, or uh, human serum albumin, is the most abundant protein in the blood, at least sixty percent of total plasma protein. And usually, tetraphenylethene maleimide dye is non-emissive, or it has a decreased capacity to radiate something, so when you combine the carbonyl and olefin groups of maleimide itself with an addition reaction with a thiol group forming emissive product, such as tetraphenylethene succinimide, you get a high-sensitivity and high-contrast readout of the blood sample, at least compared to the industry standard of luminol.”

Fury eyes Romanoff who only gives a minute nod but doesn’t look away from the tablet. She swipes a few more times, and asks, “why didn’t you continue to follow chemistry as much as you did psychology? I see you continue to publish with previous professors of yours, the latest of which is ‘Ketone Synthesis from Benzyldiboronates and Esters: Leveraging a-Boryl Carbanions for Carbon-Carbon Bond Formation.’”

“Oh!” Peter, now a bit more comfortable in speaking in such an objective field, “that was a fun one. A former professor of mine headed that study, of course, but ketogenesis itself can be—”

Fury puts up a hand to stop the conversation, “but why psychology, Parker?”

“Well, Director Fury, psychology as a field can be primarily done independently, without relying on the availability of labs and media materials. Also, psychology has a far greater application. While I can theorize and hypothesize myself in a dead-end, so to speak, with psychology, it’s much more inter-connected. Like, I’m sure you read from my file, but my thesis on analyzing psychographic profiling and targeting on a spectrum of acceptable influence to troubling effective persuasion, its applications to advertising, campaigning, and, to what I assume caught the Bureau’s attention, profiling, there’s seemingly no end to where that thought process can lead to.”

Hill gets up from her seat and walks to the three of them, standing on the other side of Fury’s desk. “Tell me about your team.”

“Oh, they’re extremely talented and well-adapted to the field. Special Agent Leeds, particularly his work on cyber—”

“We’re aware of their accomplishments. To be blunt, how would they function in your absence?”

Peter must have some concerning look on his face, as Romanoff moves forward to sit in the seat closest to Peter, and reassures him, “you’re not being fired, or anything. We are simply suggesting you take on a new assignment, and want to assess the priority of your replacement, or even have you take on the assignment in a hybrid-fashion and keep your spot on your team.”

“Well, they’re all great. My skillset in profiling is shared by at least two members of the team to a sufficient competency,” Peter struggles to say.

There’s a silence that takes over the room. There’s definitely a subject nobody wants to breach, but, unsurprisingly, Romanoff takes the lead.

“What do you know about Special Agent Stark?”

Peter furrows his brows a bit and tries to recollect any information he heard about the man, and says as much, “I only know him by reputation only. He developed a multicriteria decision framework for cybersecurity risk assessment that the Bureau is now in the process of integrating. That his god-mother served as the Director years prior, and his father served as Executive Assistant Director to the Intelligence Branch.”

“Anything else?”

“Well,” Peter tries to figure out how to say this delicately, “he’s recently gained a bit of a reputation on taking special cases outside of official assignments that don’t often come to a satisfactory conclusion.”

“Stark has started to direct an increasing amount of our discretionary funds to participate in these assignments,” Fury begins. “A project he has termed the X-Files. The reason we want you here is to assist Special Agent Stark on these so-called X-Files, proceed as normal, writing field reports on your activities along with your observations on the validity of the work.”

Peter looks at three of the occupants in the room, Hill, Fury, and Romanoff, and not a single facial expression changed to express any sort of joke or to signify the magnitude of what was asked of him.

“Am I to understand that you want me to debunk the X-Files project?”

“We trust you to make the proper scientific analysis and make evidence-based conclusions. You’ll want to contact Stark as soon as you’re available.”

Peter nods, “of course, Director Fury.”

“Parker, we’ll be looking forward to your reports,” Romanoff says with a smile.

* * *

Peter walks along the maze of a basement-like floor, with only most of the lights on. He can see that some of the hallways he’s passed are somewhat used as storage, with filing cabinets pouring out of doorways. He knows that the Bureau is undergoing a huge digitizing effort mostly done by the lowest level of staff – or for a short-term punishment in lieu of being written up. He can imagine Stark is maybe one or two steps away from being re-assigned there himself.

He finds the door with a scrawled on a post-it, written “X-Files.” It’s childish, so Peter can’t tell if it was from another colleague or a self-imposed label from Stark himself. Peter knocks as he considers the question, but finds it more likely it was self-identification from Stark himself when he hears “nobody here except for the F.B.I.’s most unwanted.”

Despite the actual content of the words spoken, Peter takes this as his cue to enter the office, and is unimpressed with the decoration of the room, to put it lightly.

A man with a pristine beard is hunched over his desk, glasses nearly falling off his nose, peering over what Peter can only assume is a Linux display. There’s another computer screen with small font covering the entire display that just turns into an indecipherable mess, at least from Peter’s vantage point.

“Special Agent Stark, I’ve been assigned to work with you.” Peter hangs his hand out for a customary handshake, but the agent in question looks at him with feigned disinterest, if only revealed by the minute eye movement up and down Peter’s frame, and only then they shake hands.

“Isn’t it nice to be suddenly so cared about,” Stark says, maybe more to himself than anything, and turns back to his work. “So, who did you piss off to work in the trenches of the X-Files, Parker?”

While Peter knew it was highly unlikely his assignment would be a surprise, he finds it counter-intuitive that Stark would both know his name and yet would think he pissed someone off to be seemingly demoted. Peter tries to make a good impression regardless, working up against a possibly negative preconceived idea of who he is.

“Actually, I’m looking forward to working with you.” It’s positive and forward-thinking. “I’ve heard a lot about you –” and as if hearing how that might sound, Peter quickly adds, “your work on cybersecurity algorithmic countermeasures, that the Bureau even admitted surpasses their own procedures was extremely groundbreaking, especially with the rate of continued tech development in the field.”

At this, Stark turns his swivel chair around to fully face Peter. “So, do I have a fan or a spy?”

Peter scrunches his face, “well, if you have any doubt about my qualifications or credentials, Special Agent Stark, I’m –”

“You graduated top of your class in Princeton with both your baccalaureate degree and your doctorate degree, with over twenty publications listing you as an author, despite the short five-year time frame. You’re fluent in Spanish, Italian, and Tagalog, and sources hint that you might be adept at American Sign Language.”

Peter’s words get stuck in his throat but quickly recovers. “A nice summary of my resume.”

“You’re also a profiler. A lot of your more recent psychology publications intersect with the idea of manipulation and malleability on human behavior and self-construct. So, Parker, how would you profile me?”

Peter rolls his eyes and quickly responds, “you’re a mess.”

Stark bursts out in a laugh. “Alright, honesty? A mess of a person or the environment?”

Peter looks pointedly around – piles of reports and files on every available surface, some that tipped already onto the floor, with what some might call decoration that Peter mistakenly believed were case evidence, but now seems more like paranormal and alien paraphernalia. Photographs of misshapen bones, butchered animals, and he even spies a photograph? Illustration of a supposed alien spaceship in a classic tea saucer shape. He has his work cut out for him.

“Both.” If Peter wasn’t still holding onto his briefcase, he’d cross his arms. Suddenly unimpressed about the entire affair. Although Peter knows Stark is maybe a decade or two his senior, Peter feels the weight of responsibility for the older man. Maybe the delicate nature of them both being legacy agents would help Director Fury navigate the situation.

Stark just looks absolutely delighted. “I’ll take that, short stack.”

“Not my name.”

“I’ll call you Peter if you call me Tony?” Tony offers.

“Tony,” Peter repeats, trying how it feels on his lips. It’s casual, befitting of the man in front of him.

“Well, I already got our first assignment, a small creature was sighted in Texas that drained local farmers’ goats of their blood.” Tony takes this moment to finally get up and go to the tallest pile of files in the room, on top of a printer – fax machine? – an out-dated printer and practically throws a file to Peter.

Peter scrambles to balance both his briefcase and the file in his arms, while Tony continues on. “I have the reports and biopsies of the goats in question on file, both on the paper one in your hands, and a set already scanned and filed in my tablet that I’ll e-mail it to you before we get there. Familiarize it with yourself, maybe brush up on your Spanish, we’ll head out tomorrow – bright and early!”

**Author's Note:**

> Deputy Director oversees all FBI domestic and international investigative and intelligence activities. Assistant Deputy Director manages all FBI personnel, budget, administration, and infrastructure. 
> 
> Some of the science-y things were taken from the abstracts of the following articles, which I only understood maybe five words from. 
> 
> Wang Z, Zhang P, Liu H, Zhao Z, Xiong L, He W, Kwok RTK, Lam JWY, Ye R, and Tang BZ. 2019. Robust Serum-Albumin-Responsive AlEgen Enables Latent Bloodstain Visualization in High Resolution and Reliability for Crime Scene Investigation. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 11 (19), 17306 – 17312. DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b04269. 
> 
> L Boran, Chirik PJ. 2020. Ketone Synthesis from Benzyldiboronates and Esters: Leveraging a-Boryl Carbanions for Carbon-Carbon Bond Formation. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 142 (5), 2429-2437. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.9b11944.
> 
> This is a WIP, I'm not sure how often or how consistent I'll be able to update it, but I have a rough outline of where I want this story to be.


End file.
